Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Dec. 8th, 2020

Evidence of meeting #11 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was yukon.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

Food Security in Northern Communities

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Matt Parry Director General, Policy Development and Analysis Directorate, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food

Wayne Walsh Director General, Northern Strategic Policy Branch, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs

John Fox Director General, Innovation Programs Directorate, Programs Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food

Mary Trifonopoulos Senior Manager, Healthy Living, Population Health and Wellness Division, First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, Department of Indigenous Services

Lindsay Turner Director, Poverty Reduction Division, Government of Nunavut

Tracy St. Denis Assistant Deputy Minister, Economic Development Industry, Tourism and Investment, Government of the Northwest Territories

Ranj Pillai Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, Government of Yukon

1:10 p.m.

Director, Poverty Reduction Division, Government of Nunavut

Lindsay Turner

This project is run through our Department of Health, so I don't have 100% of the details, but part of what the guidelines did was go into some of the biological information around the different food-borne illnesses and how to store the food. If you're preparing the food, at what temperature do you need to store it? It was that type of information. It goes through a number of different species and different animals and how to store them, as well as some of the preparation techniques.

It talks also about serving the food. Traditionally, Inuit preference would be to eat the food as fresh as possible, as soon as they cut the animal out on the land, so the guidelines look at both eating the food raw and cooking the food.

I'm aware of a pilot project that was run at the hospital here in Iqaluit, and I could find some information on the results from that project and send it to the committee.

1:10 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bob Bratina

It would be great if you could do that, and thank you very much.

Thank you to another wonderful panel on a very serious and important subject. We're honoured to have the responsibility as the indigenous and northern affairs committee to listen, to reflect and to recommend, so we will do that.

In closing, I was eager to get this in as we were discussing the opportunities earlier of growing food in the north. The old guy with the hat driving the last spike was Lord Strathcona. As a young man, he managed the Hudson's Bay post in Hamilton Inlet, and it was his pride and pleasure to make a garden. Using fish fertilizer, he succeeded in Hamilton Inlet in growing almost every kind of vegetable, and even ripened melons and other fruit under glass. An American visitor said that the best cauliflower he ever tasted was in Lord Strathcona's garden. I don't know if there's any value in that for today's discussion, but I had to get it in.

Thank you so much, everyone.

This meeting is adjourned.